CVN screenshot of plaintiff attorney Rick Friedman delivering his closing argument in the previous recently concluded PCB trial in Seattle
Seattle, WA - Closing arguments take place Tuesday in Washington state court over chemical contamination at a local school, after a similar trial this summer ended in a $185 million verdict against Bayer's Monsanto unit, and the closing arguments will be webcast gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
The ongoing trial in King County Superior Court began in September, but the opening statements and all witness testimony to date have taken place via Zoom. The closings, however, will be held in-person before Judge Douglas North. The case involves claims that a group of students, parents, teachers, and staff from Sky Valley Education Center suffered a range of injuries due to exposure to toxic chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
The case is largely a rematch of a previous trial that ended in July with a plaintiffs verdict consisting of $50,150,000 in compensatory damages and $135 million in punitive damages awarded to a group of teachers claiming exposure to PCBs located in the aging school’s outdated fluorescent light fixtures caused debilitating neurological damage.
Bayer argues that while PCBs were present at the Sky Valley facility, they were never found in sufficient numbers to cause the injuries the teachers allege they sustained.
Plaintiffs maintain Monsanto knew for years that PCBs posed a cancer risk, but that they intentionally withheld that information from the public.
The plaintiffs in the current case are again represented by Friedman | Rubin, and Monsanto is represented by Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP.
The case is captioned Long, et al. v. Pharmacia, LLC, case number 18-2-00001-7 SEA.
